


Stakeholder Engagement

by mrkinch



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Bisexual Character, Gen, Spoilers for Broken Homes, Spoilers for Foxglove Summer, Spoilers for The Hanging Tree, a cavalcade of POVs, first person POV throughout, missing scenes to start, that ace!nightingale fic, unspecified future to end, welcome to my hand-wavey timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-12 04:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11154327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrkinch/pseuds/mrkinch
Summary: stakeholder engagement is an essential part of, well, life





	1. Two Things at Once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightingale recruits Beverley Brook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although this is a stand-alone missing scene, it is the first bit of an unfinished ace!Nightingale fic (though that does not come up and is not tagged). If I work up my courage I’ll post the other bit that stands alone, and who knows? I might figure out how the whole story ends.

The best I can say is that Peter had been less wary of me since the disasters at Skygarden Tower. Not that he actually said anything to me about all that, mind you. I got the story from Ty, in great detail, whether I wanted it or not. Anyway, these days if I talk to Peter I’ve called him, but we do talk. So when the Nightingale told me why he wanted to meet me, I wondered why I hadn’t heard from Peter about his “current inquiry” and how it might concern me. What can I say? We’re a work in progress.

I suggested Nightingale meet me at The Red Lion, and if I did not add, because it was close to my house and not close to Mum's or Ty's, at least I could say their drinks were decent. 

Nightingale stood as I approach the booth and fetched our orders before reseating himself. His face never gives much away but I thought he looked tired and tense. I figured I knew why. I was mostly right.

"Miss Thames,” he said. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me."

That was a bit much. "I'm just Beverley, even if you need a favor." 

Nightingale nodded his thanks and got to business. "You may not know that I asked Peter to go up to Herefordshire to ascertain there is no Folly, or ex-Folly connection to the missing children case ongoing. The likelihood was not great and Peter believed the errand was more in the nature of a distraction from recent events than a legitimate inquiry. But once he made his initial contacts and found nothing to concern us on that front, he asked to be allowed to stay and help the investigation in whatever capacity they chose."

Of course he did. I rolled my eyes, which Nightingale acknowledged with a twitch of his lips and a quirked eyebrow. It was Peter, after all.

"But it now seems there may be magical or supernatural involvement after all, although it is not at all clear what or who. I would prefer Peter have back-up and hope to go up myself, but it would be unwise for me to leave the Folly just now." 

"Lesley," I guessed.

Nightingale looked away but I didn't miss the flash of pain. He'd misread Lesley and she’d fucked off and left Peter to die. I didn't think he'd be over that any time soon. 

"She's been in touch with Peter, hinting of hostilities to come that we daren't ignore," he said. "Taunting him." He paused, and seemed to collect himself. "Would you be willing to go up to Rushpool as my deputy of a sort? Keep an eye on Peter, give him a hand if you can. I imagine you'll have insights into the situation that we might not." 

_Being mere wizards_ , I thought.

"Rushpool is a long way from my river," I said. "How do Thames agreements work way out there?"

Nightingale had clearly been expecting my question. "Peter belongs first of all to the Folly. He took that oath before you or even I had the least idea what he would become." Then he grinned, like I'd only ever seen that one time when I'd come upon him unexpectedly at Spring Court. "Something to keep in mind if you have private plans for him."

Yeah, I had plans. "Peter can be two things at once, you know," I said.

Nightingale nodded again. "Of course he can," he said. "Even three."

I’d always thought Peter's thing for his boss went way past admiration into hero worship and beyond, for all he hid it behind "Nightingale's shit at technology" and "Nightingale doesn't understand modern policing". I’d also heard, once or twice, Peter's description of Nightingale talking shit about Peter, and I was pretty sure Nightingale had a similar problem. I didn't blame him - again, it was Peter after all - but it took me a moment to catch up. 

"Does he know it's not just him then?" I said, because there really wasn’t any other context. 

Nightingale waved it away but not as though I'd caught him out. He doesn't speak on impulse, the Nightingale. "That’s a conversation for the future," he said.

"Fine, but not never. He needs to know."

"I hope my care for Peter is clear," Nightingale said. He stared down at his glass, turning it distractedly between his palms. "When I was a boy it took ten years to train a wizard. Peter is responding well in extraordinary circumstances, but I'll be his teacher for years yet." He looked up at me. "While I am, my claim on him is the Folly's." 

I gave him the eye and he seemed to give way. 

"It won't be never," Nightingale said, "nor necessarily ten years. And it may not be quite what you imagine. But at the moment Peter's welfare is my greatest concern, and getting him back here no more scathed than he already is. Will you go?"

The countryside held no terrors for me, not after a year at Staines, and working with the Nightingale was really going to piss off Ty. Besides, it was Peter. Fair exchange, I figured.

"Sure. Anything I need to know"?


	2. Priorities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the Riverside Inn Beverley and Nightingale continue to converse over Peter's head

Beverley drove us away from the funfair while I called Nightingale on her mobile. He picked up so quickly I wondered if he’d actually been holding the phone, waiting. I said we would be in Aymestry shortly, to which he responded with a brief pause and then, "Good". Bev said we were to meet at the Riverside Inn to get our story straight before going official, and that fortunately the media pack was fully occupied elsewhere. Before long we pulled in beside the jag, parking under the wall of a stone bridge over the River Lugg. I glanced over at Bev, who smirked.

Nightingale didn’t burst out of the Inn, exactly, but he was striding towards us by the time we were clear of the Asbo. Trailing behind him, looking only mildly out of place, was Varvara Sidarovna. I wondered just how far Nightingale trusted her, and if they had come to a special arrangement for this trip. 

As Nightingale got closer something about him eased, but his summer weight wool suit was faintly rumpled, giving him a distinctly rattled look that sat oddly on him. We met along the blind wall of the Inn, and he was reaching for me even before I stopped. He seized my wrists hard, the unyielding strength of his grip sending a shock up my arms, and held me there while he looked me over, studying my face closely. Maybe he did know where I'd been and how lucky he was to have me back.

Bev rolled her eyes. "He's still just Peter. D'you think I wouldn't know?" 

We had a little time before the local constabulary would be all over us, and for once Bev didn't wish herself away. The Inn was nearly empty and we settled into an out-of-the-way booth, Nightingale in the corner where he could keep an eye on Varvara, who was sitting just out of earshot with a coffee and her tablet. I gave them a full account, the one DCI Windrow would absolutely not want to hear. Bev filled in the rescue and Nightingale asked a few questions, but once we had our story we all went unexpectedly quiet. Me and Nightingale would work through the details and ramifications back at the Folly, doubtless many times, but right then no one seemed interested in debating Molly's origins, or the power of Roman roads, or anything really. I thought Nightingale's gaze lingered on me longer than was strictly necessary and I caught him giving Bev a few penetrating looks as well. Bev pulled my arm around her shoulders and leaned her head on my chest. Nightingale was sitting back, looking relaxed and, I thought, understandably relieved. I glanced over at Varvara and caught her watching us with an expression I couldn’t quite place before she turned back to her reading. The silence was surprisingly comfortable.

"I trust you kept our priorities in mind?" said Nightingale eventually, presumably to Bev because I hadn't the least idea what the fuck he meant.

I could feel Bev shrug against me. "I thought 'boyfriend' would be more relatable than 'baby wizard'", she said.

I might have taken offence at that but decided I was just glad to be back where two people I care a lot about could take the piss, and didn't bother.

Then Nightingale's mobile chimed and we were back on the job.


	3. Hot Water and Limited Sympathy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter's mind works in mysterious ways and Bev gives him a little shove

Beverley lay back in her enormous bathtub, braids twisted together atop her head like a crown, and held out her arms. I climbed in ungracefully, every muscle twinging, and sank into the water, leaning back against her and sliding down until my head was under her chin and water lapped at my collarbones. As we lay there I could feel Bev and the water’s heat go to work on all the places Chorley had stomped me. To distract me from the essentially null result of the whole terrible confrontation, Bev told me how it had been at her mum's during the battle at One Hyde Park: Chelsea sticking to Lea like a shadow, Rom being a drama queen because Mama Thames wouldn't let her leave the house to go clubbing, and everyone on edge about what Ty might be up to.

"We could feel the magic your boss and that other wizard were throwing around, too," she said. "It tickled the back of my mind, like something I couldn't quite remember."

"That far away?" I said, and filed it away to ask about later, when I was more likely to be awake for the answer.

And I must have dozed off, because I couldn't have been completely awake when I said, "Is it just me or is Nightingale more... relaxed than he used to be?"

Bev snorted because that was even weirder than I usually get when I’m groggy. "How would I know how he used to be?” she said. “You were so busy pretending you didn't think he was all that for me to trust anything you said about him." She paused. "He looked grim enough that time he asked me to help out, but I figured that was because of Lesley, and Skygarden." She put her arms around me. "A lot of us looked grim after that."

As well I knew. Lesley's defection and the destruction of Skygarden Tower for attempted magical gain had sent shock waves through the magical community that me and Nightingale were still following up. But I'm hard to distract when I'm pondering Nightingale, even while lolling half asleep in a tub full of hot water. "I think he is more relaxed," I said, "and I don’t know why. We’ve as much weird bollocks on our hands as ever. More."

I didn't expect an answer, and I was nearly asleep again when Bev said, "It’s your fault, you know." 

At first I didn’t get it. Then I did. "Fuck," I groaned. "It's because I'm making good progress in magic, isn't it? I mean, he even said I was, and now he's thinking that even if fucking Chorley.... " I tried again. "It's because he thinks with a spare wizard at the Folly now he can worry less. About surviving.” 

The realization that Nightingale actually thought this way had hit me hard way back at our first Spring Court, and it scared the hell out of me. But I'd managed to shove my fear aside, or at least not obsess over it. Then we were betrayed and I'm sure he would no more have left me to face the aftermath alone than I would have left him. 

But it was different now. I was more motivated than ever, studying harder and learning faster, and we had a far better idea what we were up against: a fully-trained magician who would happily kill us both, whatever "deal" for my continued existence he claimed to have with Lesley. In some circles I imagine that killing wizards was the least disastrous of Chorley’s plans. But while Nightingale sacrificing himself to bring down Chorley might have made no sense to me, I absolutely did not put it past Nightingale. I wanted to leap out of Bev's tub and run all the way to the Folly, find Nightingale, and shake him until he understood that he was more important than his ability to do magic, even in the face of an horrifically unethical practitioner. 

If I did that sort of thing, that is.

Instead, Bev sat up sharply and gave me a shake. "Peter! That’s not...." She paused, then lay back, and I gratefully settled back against her. “So ask him,” she said.

It seemed like a ludicrously bad idea. I trust Bev, but what did she know about Nightingale? I said as much. 

“More than you might think,” she said. “We did have a nice conversation before I went up to Herefordshire.” 

Now there was a terrifying thought. “About what?” I asked, but I knew she wouldn’t tell me. Bev’s good at keeping secrets she wants kept. “You know that I… worry about him but it’s not something he’ll thank me for bringing up.”

Bev sighed and I could well imagine her face. Worrying wasn’t the half, and she knew it. I was pretty sure I was in love with Nightingale. Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale. My boss. I was a good deal less sure what that meant and really fucking sure I didn’t want to discuss it with him. 

“Y’know, neither you nor Nightingale is actually twelve,” she said.

I snorted at the vast understatement. Bev ignored me. 

“You can’t actually die of embarrassment,” she continued, “and Nightingale may go all posh for a bit but he’s not going to suddenly hate you, or anything else stupid. You talk about all sorts of terrible things. How would this be any worse?”

“Bev!” I yelped. But she was right. I was being twelve, and embarrassed, and scared, and all the things that keep people from talking to people they care about. I had to be something else.


	4. Using Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One excellent thing about Peter is that he’s willing to accept suggestion

I visit the magical library more often these days, now that the percentage of books there I can usefully consult is increasing. But it’s still to some extent Nightingale’s refuge, a place where he can expect not to be disturbed. Yet there I was, and I was definitely going to disturb him. 

He was seated at the desk by the window when I entered, making notes from a bit of manuscript that my Greek cursive wasn’t up to identifying (we’ve some odd cases ongoing, don’t ask). The low winter light glinted off his pen and caught in the nap of the charcoal jumper he wore over his palest grey shirt. He looked as relaxed as I’d ever seen him. It looked good, and I wanted that for him. I did. Just not for the reason my brain was coming up with.

“Peter,” said Nightingale, laying down his pen and looking up at me, surprise at my arrival mild but obvious. “Are you looking for something? Is it anything I should know about?”

“Yeah, it is,” I said. I’m not used to having trouble meeting Nightingale’s eyes. “I was talking to Bev and she says I should just ask you.” I planned to be casual about it, but the urgency I’d felt in Beverley’s bathtub flooded back and it all came out in a rush. “You’re not thinking that it would be all right if you got killed as long as you brought down Chorley, are you? Because it wouldn’t be. You’re more important than that. To me. To lots of people, I mean. But mostly to me.” 

I didn’t think I could have made a worse job of it if I’d tried, so I stopped. Nightingale blinked and his brow furrowed for an instant before it smoothed. I must have really surprised him.

“Peter”, he said, and his mouth closed to a thin line. He didn’t ask where my question came from, which was worrying. "No, Peter, I’m not thinking that,” he said and scowled. “I have no intention of giving that bastard the satisfaction of killing me.”

“Good,” I said. I hadn’t thought the conversation through any further but I didn’t think it was over so I waited.

After a long moment Nightingale got up and crossed the small room to where I was still standing just inside the door. He stopped, studied my face and then sighed. “I wonder if you have any idea how much I care about you,” he said. 

There was quiet resignation in his tone, which confused me, and something else that didn’t bear thinking about right then. But it seemed not to be an actual question so I didn’t answer it. I felt a touch of dread, though, and wished I my poker face wasn’t complete shit when I’m not coppering. 

“Or in how many ways,” said Nightingale. “You’re still my student but you are also becoming a colleague, something I’ve wanted, and needed, for a very long time.”

While there may be no such thing as mind reading, Nightingale has no trouble reading me. _Take that, Lady Helena_ , I thought. 

“If you were ever to consider me your friend,” he continued, “I’d be greatly honored.”

That’s Nightingale. So careful not to presume, at least when he’s not sending me off for refs. Then there’s me, wanting mostly to be absolutely sure Nightingale knew I wanted my governor alive, not a dead hero. 

He was right there in front of me, looking fucking beautiful and the tiniest bit uncertain, and I had to reach for him. He caught my wrists, but gently, no urgency or fear, and allowed me to press forward. I wanted badly to be closer, and I think I made some kind of happy sigh when Nightingale slid his arms around me, drawing me in and holding me there. The idea of kissing him drifted into my mind, but I didn’t get that feeling when the other person is thinking about it, too, and it drifted out again. His long, strong hands were firm on my back and my hands settled on his waist. I’m a bit taller than him and it just felt right to hide my face in his neck. His jumper was soft under my hands and my cheek.

“You think you need me,” he said. I made muffled protesting noises because it was so much more than that, but he just held on. “And you do, but I need you just as much.”

That startled me, I can tell you. I know I’m useful. The Nightingale’s tough, clever starling, that’s me, and better all the time. But I wondered if that was entirely what he meant.

“And not only because you’ve given the Folly a future I could not have imagined,” he said, as good as reading my mind, again.

So nope, not entirely. I waited, but he didn’t say anything else.

Nightingale seemed perfectly at ease, happy to stand there forever with his arms around me as the light in the room faded. I was pretty happy too, but I realized there were things I still needed to say. I reluctantly untucked my face and stepped back enough to look at him. He let me, of course, but I caught his hands. I really didn’t want to let him go yet. 

“I’m not sorry for all this,” I said, gesturing vaguely with my head because my hands were busy. “I’ve seen often enough how seriously you take duty of care towards your apprentices”. The plural was a bugger but Nightingale didn’t flinch. “I am sorry we haven’t all deserved it.” 

It was shockingly easy to talk to him, as though a barrier so familiar I barely noticed it had fallen. But I didn’t think it would stay down so I hurried on.

“Thing is,” I said, “with me it goes both ways. The whole thing about an apprentice’s responsibility to their teacher but not for them? It’s bollocks, for us anyway. Even if me protecting you wasn’t in that weird oath I took, it might as well have been. Everything goes both ways.” 

That was as close to declaring myself as I was likely to get even in the surreal freedom of that surreal moment, but the understanding on Nightingale’s face made me think I might have made my point. 

And because knowing Nightingale understood made it all real, my brain threw up that sodding barrier again and my heart began trying to hammer its way out of my chest. When I could see past the pounding in my ears I noticed Nightingale was looking down at our joined hands, where his fingers, pale and sinewy, had twined with my brown ones. It looked good. It felt really good, like an unexpected calm even through the adrenalin haze of ‘what the fuck am I doing?’. 

Those moments that stretch out forever and are too damned short? Yeah, like that, after which Nightingale smiled, brief and open. 

“Thank you, Peter,” he said, and squeezed my hands before letting go. 

Apparently I escaped to the tech cave, though I’ve no memory of it, where I stared at a blank screen and tried unsuccessfully to not think about what I’d said and what we’d done and the way Nightingale had smiled. Eventually my mobile rang. It was Beverley, waiting for me at the Bull’s Head. Was I coming? I said I was and headed out in the hope I’d pull myself together between Russell Square and Chiswick.

I don’t know if I managed it or not because as soon as I walked in Bev waved me over, kissed me, and wedged me into the corner where a pint of the best materialized in front of me. I spent the rest of the evening trying to work out why she looked so smug. I even asked, but like I said, Bev does keep her secrets.


	5. But what does it mean?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> time passes, circumstances change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, [therev](http://archiveofourown.org/users/therev), for holding my hand through this.<333

Peter and I have always had good working and non-working relations, I’ve felt, even through what I see in retrospect as Lesley’s efforts to turn Peter against magic, and me. At the time I put it down to the natural opposition of apprentices to master or junior employees to their governor, and if subsequent events suggest a less benign explanation, that’s in the past. Now that Peter is DS Grant we’ve become even easier with each other, although I am still sir, or boss or, occasionally, guv as the mood strikes him. I never know which to expect and it’s possible I find the entire business inappropriately amusing.

Once promoted, Peter complained that it did him little good in a unit as small as ours, and began pressing me to take on another apprentice. Two, if he had his way. Minions to do his bidding, he said. Lab assistants, I said, conspirators in his unabated magical experimentation. But the prospect of Abigail joining us when she finishes her probation seemed to the Commissioner sufficient personnel increase even before our highest profile case went quiet, and my vehement protestation that Lesley May is still out there has had no effect. Peter grumbles that they don’t credit a female practitioner as a threat and I fear he may be right. They haven’t the measure of Lesley that we have.

You see, after keeping just out of reach for far too long, Martin Chorley managed to turn up dead, which would have been better news if we were certain who killed him. With magic certainly, according to Dr Vaughn, but unfortunately the body had been stripped of every particle of metal and plastic and had lain hidden for so long even I could not detect any vestigia, let alone the killer’s _signare_. About that time Lesley went to ground, as well, circumstantial of course but highly suggestive. Peter struggles terribly with the implications of Lesley as possible murderer, horror both that she would kill anyone apparently in cold blood, even Chorley, and at his own intense relief that the man is dead, all wound round with a tiny, unwelcome voice asking if it wasn’t just possible Lesley killed Chorley for Peter’s sake. Lesley had been gone from us too long and there were too many hints of rifts between her and Chorley for that voice to have much power, but it was there and it pained me to watch it work. 

Much as I wished I could do more to help Peter through his troubles than keep him busy and offer him a friendly whisky if he was at the Folly on a bad night, I left him otherwise in the capable hands of Beverly Brook. Beverley made it quite clear to me she felt there was such a thing as too much propriety. I responded that while she might well be right, surely she would agree that being Peter’s teacher put me under certain constraints. Beverley said she had never let having power stop her, and changed the subject.

It was one of Peter’s particularly bad nights. Belgravia had called him in on a reported sighting of a young woman wearing one of the faces we had circulated as “Lesley May”. This prompted a revisiting of other sightings and immersed Peter in an inescapably painful case assessment in preparation for questioning the potential witness. To make it worse, Beverley had by command been at Mama Thames’s on “river business” all day and no return was imminent. Peter, preferring generally and on these nights quite specifically not to stay alone in Beverley’s house by the river, turned up at the Folly hungry and exhausted. He reported that the sighting remained unsubstantiated, his day had been total bollocks, and if Molly would be so kind he would like very much to stay for dinner.

After a dinner that was a credit both to Molly’s cooking and to her unexpected sympathy for Peter’s distress, I offered to make a fire in the reading room if Peter cared to join me there. Privately I feared it would be perhaps quieter than he needed, but the bottle of Mortlach on the sideboard would not go amiss. In the event Peter said he would, and trailed slowly after me, his mute unhappiness making my throat ache. 

Peter watched as I laid the fire, standing behind one of the deep blue upholstered chairs and gripping its back unmercifully. He’s never gotten the knack of fires, at least not fires in grates, and I thought he was watching to learn. But although his gaze fell on my hands, he seemed too distracted to take anything in. I heard him inhale sharply as I lit the kindling with a modified lux and looked up to find him staring at the flame as it gathered strength.

“I love magic,” said Peter, so quietly I thought at first he was talking only to himself. “I love learning magic and learning about it. I love doing magic. I love watching you do magic, and I love that watching you do magic amazes me every time.” He looked at me, face open and almost more than I could bear. “Sometimes I think magic takes too much, but then I watch you cast a simple lux and I don’t fucking care.”

I stood, but there was nothing to say. The fire was burning well, crackling merrily behind the screen. Peter continued to look at me, his brow furrowed. I wondered with a touch of panic what he saw in my own face as I waited to see where his thoughts were going and whether there was anything I could do to help. 

“It’s more than back-up, isn’t it?” said Peter at last. “What we do for each other. We’re more than an operational unit, you and me. We’re a personal unit too, better together. Like me and Bev only different. No fucking.” He gave me an assessing look. “Not that I’d be averse, mind you.” he said, with the ghost of his usual cheeky grin.

I smiled back at him, relieved that he could make the joke, and shook my head. “It’s not something I’ve found worth my time,” I said. It never had been, which was only rarely an issue in a life of constant travel followed by war and isolation. In these astonishingly different times I hoped I knew how Peter would take it. 

Indeed, Peter nodded as though my response fit some idea he already had. “I nearly kissed you that afternoon in the magical library,” he said. “But I didn’t think you even noticed. It wasn’t like you thought about it and decided against it, because it was inappropriate or because I wasn’t your preferred gender or whatever, but like kissing didn’t even cross your mind. Like it just wasn’t something you did, and I wondered what else just wasn’t something you did.”

He seemed not to expect a response, intent on some train of thought that still eluded me.

“We don’t talk about everything that’s between us because one of those things is that you’re my governor,” he said. “But that doesn’t scare me the way it scares you so this is me talking about it. Because I want everything else, with you. Everything you do find worth your time.”

I stared at Peter for a moment, forgetting to breathe, before I caught myself. I have cared about Peter very deeply for a very long time, but in such a necessarily distanced fashion that I had for all practical purposes forgotten about it. Even the awareness brought inescapably to my attention that afternoon in the library had faded into the landscape in which we live and work, always there but essentially unnoticed. I had even forgotten that Peter might one day bring into focus what I could not, and now he had.

I turned back to the fire, quite unnecessarily and I was sure Peter noticed my confusion. So much for the imperturbability he likes to attribute to me in rather greater measure than I’ve ever possessed.

“Do I have it wrong?” Peter asked, clearly knowing the answer, challenging me to say otherwise.

It seemed the better part of valor to remain as I was. “No,” I managed when I could speak again. I cleared my throat. “You’ve summed up the situation well. It does… scare me, to be perfectly honest.” It always had, from the moment I realized how much Peter meant to me, clever, resilient, compassionate, turning up so unexpectedly and becoming indispensable without my consent. “I am after all sworn to protect you from all threats.”

There was movement in the room as Peter came round the chair to stand at my back, resting his hands lightly on my arms. “Is this alright?” he asked. 

I felt a kind of delighted wonder at his approach, so perfectly Peter, action based in observation. I still didn’t turn, but covered one of his hands with my own. “Quite alright,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I’m to do the heavy lifting, I get that,” Peter continued, slipping his fingers through mine. “Convince you that civilization won’t fall and the space-time continuum won’t cock up if we stop being such bloody Englishmen. And,” because of course Peter would go beyond the metaphorical, “that you won’t take advantage of the fact that I love you enough to say all this out loud.” 

Peter did not say _because you never will_ but I heard it clearly.

I thought about the many things Peter had already convinced me to do and to accept, and to my benefit, barring one or two unfortunate forays into the wilderness that is youtube. Was this the ‘not never’ I so blithely pledged to Beverley Brook? She’d say I’d taken my bloody time about it. 

I turned and stepped back a little so I could see him properly. Peter simply ran his hands down my arms slowly, seeing whether I would maintain the connection, I thought. I caught his hands as they passed over mine.

“It’s a matter of trusting myself, as well, you know,” I said. ”Common wisdom may have it that undue influence, not to say coercion, requires a sexual relationship but I assure you that is not the case.” 

“You could coerce me now, obviously,” said Peter with some exasperation. “You’re dangerous in every way you find it useful to be. I know. I’ve seen it. But you wouldn’t.”

I stiffened, involuntarily drawing away from Peter’s casual if accurate assessment of my capacity to harm. “Your faith in me is appreciated,” I said, my tone sharper than I would have liked, “but it’s hardly a solution.”

“Look,” said Peter more gently. He stuffed his hands into his pockets in an attempt to appear at ease, but he looked worried now, and a little sad. It had not been my plan for the evening to make Peter look so. “I know you practically as well as I know Bev, and you, you as good as read my mind. We talk to each other easily, given who and what we are, and we’ve had each other’s backs from the start.” I had the distinct impression this was to him a familiar list. “It’s only that now I’ve said it, and whatever you’ve said in response, you haven’t actually disagreed.” Peter tried to school his face to neutral, without great success. He has an excellent poker face on the job, far less so outside it. But I didn’t need his expression to know what was coming. “Do you?” he asked. “Disagree, I mean.”

And there it was. 

“No,” I said at last, “How could I? Our lives are bound together, working and otherwise. But what do you want to happen? What do you expect will change?” I knew what I wanted, what I had thought about in ill-regulated moments, inevitable and quickly pushed into the background. 

“I want acknowledgement that you and I are stakeholders in this, whatever it is,” said Peter with the beginnings of a smirk.

That unexpected phrase nearly startled me into a laugh. But was it so very inapt? Even after all the engagement meetings we’d both attended, managed, and not infrequently endured, I was certain he had not let slip those words unintended. I smiled and shook my head in mock despair.

Apparently satisfied with himself, Peter continued. “Just going on being us, but knowing what we know about each other and have said to each other. Being fine with it. Saying it again, and feeling free to act upon it. If I never see you in hospital with Abdul hovering about again it will be too soon, but what I absolutely never want again is to see you in hospital and feel that taking your hand would seem to you too intimate, that if Abdul or, I don’t know, Stephanopoulos happened by you’d be uncomfortable.”

I remembered all too well, after Peter was pulled from under Oxford Circus (where I did not go lest in trying to hasten the rescue I made the situation worse), arriving at Peter’s room to find Lesley ensconced in the only chair. I always suspected she believed I had lured Peter away from her and from police work as she understood it, her resentment only compounded when she felt forced to follow him. On that occasion I had wanted very badly to reassure myself about Peter with a touch and could have simply marched up and done so, but I did not. 

Peter put his hand on my arm. “Thomas,” he said, my given name in his voice, for the first time in fact if not imagination, pulling my thoughts at once into the present. 

I turned towards the warmth of Peter’s hand and found him looking at me with concern and a cautious happiness. I felt like a punch to the chest how much determination it had taken for him to say these things to me, and to make it possible for me to say even as little as I had said in return. I reached out and took his face between my hands, confusing Peter for a moment, but he did not resist. When our foreheads touched he sighed.

“Never again,” I murmured, and wondered if that sounded as much like an oath to Peter as to me. 

We drew apart and I took a deep breath. Peter took my hands in his, our fingers again intertwined, brown with pale. There was a pause as I collected myself. Peter waited patiently. 

“I want that as well, just as you say,” I said, “although I imagine I’ll continue to be a ‘bloody Englishman’ about it from time to time. And our colleagues will make assumptions.”

“Maybe it will distract them from their assumptions about magic?” Peter didn’t sound convinced. I certainly wasn’t. “Those who really know us will be fine and if anyone else notices, let them squirm.” His face lit up. “Imagine some poor sod going to Bev about us, thinking they know something she doesn’t! That would be epic.” 

Torn between laughter and horror, I took refuge in pedantic criticism of Peter’s word choice. But privately I agreed that ‘epic’ might well apply. Beverley Brook does not tolerate interference.

Peter grinned widely for the first time. “You know, Bev is going to be unbearably smug that we’ve begun to sort ourselves out,” he said. Then he shot me a querying glance as though to be certain I was paying attention and didn’t think this conversation was once and done. 

I smiled back at him, unreservedly now. “She has made it clear on many occasions that I was being unconscionably dilatory.”

Peter rolled his eyes, then laughed. “You know, Bev once asked, just to wind me up, how telling you that I love you could be any worse than talking about all the horrifying shit that comes with our job. I accused her of being no fucking help at all but she had a point, and I took it, that day in the library. Was this really so terrible?”

I told him no, it had not been so very terrible, but all the same it was well past time for a whiskey. 

* * * *

“Life's too short for being stupid about people you love, being afraid or jealous or any of that", Beverly had once said to me. Meaning Peter’s life, of course. I try not to think about it, but there's no point in avoiding love just because it will end. We've got what we've got, and we both have Peter until we don’t. Beverley Brook taught me that.


End file.
